“Ninety-eight percent of management work in this organization is routine. The other two percent is a tightrope walk over an erupting volcano without a safety net. Congratulations: here’s your balance pole.”
Source: The Laundry Files, The Apocalypse Codex (2012), Chapter 5, “Bashful Incendiary” (p. 75)
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Charles Stross 211
British science fiction writer and blogger 1964Related quotes
“And will you succeed? Yes indeed, yes indeed! Ninety-eight and three-quarters percent guaranteed!”
“Ninety percent of paid work is time-wasting crap. The world gets by on the other ten.”
Source: Wishing I’d Played the Ponies http://takimag.com/article/wishing_id_played_the_ponies/print#axzz3xNaU2RAk, Taki's Magazine, June 16, 2011.
“One percent intention, ninety nine percent desire.”
Ron English's Fauxlosophy: Volume 2 (2022)
“Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.”
Spoken statement (c. 1903); published in Harper's Monthly (September 1932).
Variants:
None of my inventions came by accident. I see a worthwhile need to be met and I make trial after trial until it comes. What it boils down to is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
Statement in a press conference (1929), as quoted in Uncommon Friends: Life with Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, Alexis Carrel & Charles Lindbergh (1987) by James D. Newton, p. 24.
Variant forms without early citation: "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. Accordingly, a 'genius' is often merely a talented person who has done all of his or her homework."
"Genius: one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration."
1900s
Variant: Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety nine perspiration.
“Life is 10 percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.”